ENERGY
Electricity prices to ease
Households are expected to save an average NT$58 per month on their power bills from next month as a summertime electricity price increase ends, bringing the average electricity price to NT$2.6253 per kilowatt hour for households, Taiwan Power Co (台電) said on Saturday. Company spokesman Hsu Tsao-hua (徐造華) said that a household using 330 kilowatt-hours each month is to see its bill fall to NT$637 next month, down from NT$695 this month.
CHIP EQUIPMENT
Global billings up 2.5%
North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment last month reported worldwide billings of US$2.24 billion, international trade group SEMI reported on Friday. The three-month average of worldwide billings was 5.9 percent lower than July’s US$2.38 billion, but up 2.5 percent from US$2.18 billion a year earlier, SEMI said. For the second half of the year, the group said industry spending would remain solid, with equipment expenditures in Taiwan, North America, China and Japan likely to increase over the first half.
AVIATION
EVA to receive first 787
EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空) on Thursday said that it would start operating a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner on its Hong Kong route by the end of next month after taking delivery of the plane on Tuesday next week. EVA said it expects to take delivery of three more 787s by the end of the year and plans to use the planes on the Japan route once it takes delivery of a second aircraft. The airline is to accept its first Boeing 787-10 in the second quarter of next year and plans to operate a fleet of 24 787s by 2022.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six